30 June 2015

What did Ingmar Bergman say ~ only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise ~ ?

This is a very interesting, intelligent and beautiful set of improvisations and variations on Bach's Goldberg Variations, by the French-American pianist Dan Tepfer. There's a deep sense of exploration and discovery, as well as love for the music that inspired it.

1 - Solar (Evans / Davis - the announcer credits Bill Evans, but I think this was originally from Miles Davis' Walkin')

2 - All I heard was nothing (Tepfer)

3 - Variations on Bach's Goldberg Variations

Temple, Cully; 15th April 2015, and broadcast by Espace 2 on 29th June 2015

This is awesome, thanks. It's amazing to hear him do this live. The recording is amazing but since it's a studio recording we don't know if he performed all the Bach variations and his own improvisations in sequence, or if it was edited together later from selected performances. [FYI: the sixth FLAC is Bach's "Goldberg Variations" with Tepfer's improvised variations on each of Bach's variations, but it is an incomplete recording. We have the "Aria" followed by 24 of Bach's variations (and 24 of Tepfers improvisations. So we're missing Bach's last 6 variations (and the restatement of the Aria), and of course also missing Tepfer's improvisations on these last 6 variations.]

Hello Peter - good to hear you enjoyed this. I think this ia a live recording from the 2015 Cully jazz festival, not an edited sequence from studio recordings. However, I also doubt that the the entire performance was broadcast, particularly given the rather abrupt ending to the broadcast.

He's a musician I'm now following, and he seems to perform in both Europe and North America regularly - including these variations on Goldberg Variations, so hopefully I'll catch him in performance soon;